Fujiwara Family: FOLLOW ME, FUTENS GOTTA BE, THE BEST THING SINCE CLARK AND WALLABEES FUTEN 45 1/22/12

Ryuichi Sekine vs. Kotaru Nasu

PAS: FUTEN is the ultimate in all killer no filler wrestling. This was so good, and the kind of thing which would completely stand out if it happened today, and was a 9 minute opener, overshadowed by the shinier stuff to follow. Nasu is a Style-E guy and Sekine is a K-Dojo trainee, but they can do FUTEN, nasty kicks to the body and head, and slick takedowns and submissions. Nasu was a little smaller and a little slicker, and Sekine was throwing hotter heat. Sekine goes for a Finlay roll only for Nasu to sneak out with a choke, but is able to hit it later and it felt like a bomb. Lots of moments where I felt a finish was coming, but it gets switched up. Both of these guys are still wrestling and I wonder whether this is something they are still doing.

Satoshi Kajiwara vs. Braham Shu

PAS: This wasn't it. Shu had some nice kicks to the chest, but outside of that this wasn't particular FUTEN style. Kaikwara actually does a lionsault and then puts on a kimura, and Shu spends most of the match choking with his wrist tape before he finally gets DQed. Not what I get FUTEN for. 

Takuma Sano vs. Katsumi Usuda

PAS: Two all time shoot style greats. I wasn't aware these two had matched up before I got this show, and while it isn't an all time classic (Sano seemed to have slowed down a bit at this point) it had a lot of what I loved about both dudes. Usuda really dominated early picking apart Sano really cracking his arms and legs. Sano started slow but when he got rolling he took him out with this brutal run of offense  winning an elbow exchange with brutal multiple hard elbows to Usuda's head, a sick looking released german suplex, solebut to the gut and a head kick for the KO. Felt like Usuda let a fighter with KO power hang around too long and paid for it. 

Great Sasuke/Yuki Ishikawa vs. Fujita Hayato/Manabu Suruga

PAS: Two delicious slices of toasted bread with a piece of rotten baloney in the middle. In the early sections of this match Sasuke seemed to playing along, throwing kicks and grappling, scrambling for kimuras etc. We had a great Ishikawa vs. Hayato section, Hayato didn't work a ton of FUTEN but man he was perfect for this style, scrawny little shit who just threw reckless dickish head shots, like Takeshi Ono's even more assholish younger brother. The sections with Ishikawa had some Ishikawa vs. Ikeda vibes, with Hayato headhunting the old man, and Ishikawa fighting back. Then Sasuke has to get on his bullshit, he hits a suplex on Suruga and does this super long comedy spot where he keeps telling the crowd he is going to hit his Randy the Ram elbow, it literal takes him two minutes to go up for the elbow, which he misses and planks on his head so Hayato and Suruga can kick him in the but. The match recovers a bit at the end, as they have a nifty finish run, but man that was just such a bummer, I love Sasuke, but man fuck Sasuke. 

Hikaru Sato/Kengo Mashimo vs. Daisuke Ikeda/Takeshi Ono - EPIC

PAS: This was really excellent, not at the absolute peak of FUTEN tags (which are as good as anything in wrestling ever) but only a small step below. This is one of the matches of Takeshi Ono's career (according to Cagematch, it's Japan there are so many micro indies, that he could still be working weekly) and the last one we have on tape, and it is a hell of a capper. FUTEN tags have a certain formula, where they build and build to a big one on one match up at the end. Here we really get two of those, first Sato and Ikeda brutalize each other with punches to the face and sick headbutts, Sato is right there driving his forehead right into Ikeda and eating a huge clubbing lariat to the head and some gross kicks. At one point they are on their knees throwing straight rights. Just when you figure that is going to be the crescendo, Ono and Mashimo tag in and they go at it. Mashimo is a big guy and it is really a power versus speed striking battle, with Ono peppering him with sharp shots and Mashimo landing bigger thudding stuff. At one point Mashimo hits a leg sweep which looks like it sliced off Ono's legs at the knee. It doesn't get much better then when these matches ramp up, and I kept getting more and more hyped as they killed each other. Just the best.

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Fujiwara Family: Ego's is Something the FUTEN Crush: FUTEN 1/30/11

FUTEN 1/30/11

Hajime Moriyama vs. Takeshi Ono

PAS: Moriyama is a U-Style and E-Style guy, and this was actually his last listed match on Cagematch. It was a hell of match to go out on, as Ono brutalized him with big knees, kicks and punches. He totally dots this kids face up, and by the end of the match he has two swollen cheekbones and cuts around his eyes. This wasn't a totally one sided beating though, Moriyama lands two beautiful suplexes, a backdrop and a dragon suplex both of which landed Ono right on the back of his head and neck, he is also able to attack Ono with submissions. Ono was full on though, everything you want from him, he slips out of dragon screw and toe kicks Moriyama in the forehead, hits this two punch spinning backfist and hook combo which was just gorgeous, and lands some punishing bodyshots too. What a magnificent bastard he was.

ER: A big thing I like about Futen is that nobody really gets chumped out here. Even the most punishing fighter is going to take SOME damage, it won't be a fully one sided beatdown. This fight was obviously dominated by Ono, and Moriyama was going to be taking a lot of damage along the way for sure, but Moriyama also got some cool moments of fighting back and two really nasty suplexes that could have been flash wins for him. He absorbs way too many Ono punches to the face, but when Ono misses a punch and takes a backdrop driver right on his neck and shoulders, it's one of those great Futen "is this going to get a TEN COUNT??" moments, and the same thing happens later when Moriyama catches him with a dragon suplex. Moriyama even tries to go wild early with a kneebar, holding it as long as possible and even trying to lock it on over the rope while standing on the floor. It's like he knew he was going to eat dozens of punches so he had to scrape out damage where he could. And, yes, Ono punches him a lot. And kicks him in the face, including one kick where Moriyama is on the mat and Ono slides in with one leg straight to the face. As many of these Futen matches go, the final few minutes is a battle to see how many 10 counts Moriyama would stand up for, and there's always some excitement when a guy keeps getting up (against all better judgment). But I loved the actual finish of Moriyama continuing to fight to his feet, going for slowed and weakened single legs and high kicks, and Ono easily dodging a high kick and letting Moriyama spin himself right into a brutal octopus.

Fujita Jr. Hayato vs. NARITA 

PAS: Hayato fit in FUTEN perfectly, he totally embrace the ethos of unprotected, uncalled for kicks, stomps and knees directly to the face and throat. He unloads a pretty disgusting beating on NARITA, and two matches into this show we have icepack central, with bruises, cuts and swelling on NARITA. Hayato feels like Takeshi Ono's spiritual successor in this match, a skinny prick who has no regard for his opponents well being. At one point he soccer kicks NARITA in the neck and jaw, NARITA slumps into the corner and Hayato follows with a eye obliterating running knee, just gross stuff. NARITA has some moments, he hits a German suplex and some submission attempts, but he ended up mostly being a breathing heavy bag.

Katsumi Usuda vs. Ryuichi Sekine 

PAS: Really interesting defensive performance by Usuda. He wrestled this match like he was Bernard Hopkins, dodging attacks by Sekine, and punishing mistakes with submissions and counter strikes. There was a great moment where he taunts Sekine into a headbutt exchange only to dodge the headbutt and sink in a Fujiwara armbar. At one point he just dodges and evades 10 straight punches and kicks. If Sekine was a more interesting offensive wrestler this could have been an all-timer of a match, instead it was a cool little experiment and a fascinating Usuda performance.

ER: If this is defensive Usuda I would hate to see offensive! Usuda takes Sekine apart and Sekine doesn't ever really appear to have a chance. Usuda is such a confident standing striker, love how he'll just kick out the inner ankle of Sekine and there's nothing at all that can be done to stop it. He wears Sekine down with kicks and his submission on the work really came off like he was going to advance no matter what attempts at stopping him popped up. Sekine had his one big moment where he caught an overhand strike and kicked Usuda into the ropes, then got to the apron and drove his knee into Usuda's head. It wasn't a moment that felt very Futen (felt more like something you'd see as a big moment in a Adam Cole/Tommaso Ciampa NXT main event), but it was cool seeing Sekine get a big knee. The finishing sub from Usuda was fantastic, as he locks in a rolling kneebar that looks like the finish, and Sekine starts wildly kicking at him with his free leg…except Usuda catches that kicking leg and twists it into an inverted figure 4. Usuda is a guy who always looks like he has a plan B to back up his plan A, and this was a beautiful visual of that. 

Manabu Suruga vs. Mitsuya Nagai 

PAS: I really enjoyed this too, Nagai has had a pretty hit and miss career, but usually delivers in FUTEN. His main attribute is his crowbarism, and this is Crowbar Central. There was lots of leglock fighting throughout the match, giving the whole thing an early Pancrase feel, with nifty grabbing and scissoring of limbs and some pretty class stand up exchanges (including some liver mulching body kicks by Nagai). No one wheel kicks someone in the ribs like Shinya Hashimoto but Nagai is the closest. All the submission attempts in this match were great too, Nagai twist Suruga into a twizzler with a stretch plum and Suruga rolls into some nifty arm bars and knee bars.

ER: This is one of those Futen matches that really makes me wonder if these guys just feel constant pain in their knee and elbow joints. Haven't we all had tennis elbow, where we have to hold our arm a certain way for a couple days because "hey doc it hurts when I do (this)"? These guys must be in 24/7 "hurts when I do this" territory, because you cannot get your limbs bent around this much without residual damage. Sometimes I tweak my knee a little while out running, and so I don't run for a few days, occasionally ice it, and am careful when walking down stairs. I assume these guys just look at stairs with spite at this point. The submissions all looked really painful, and my favorite was Nagai using a bit of old school ingenuity and jamming his foot into Suruga's armpit, then bending Suruga's arm back over his foot. It looks like the kind of sub that would have won UFC 3. 

Daisuke Ikeda/Yuki Ishikawa vs. Kengo Mashimo/Makoto Hashi

PAS: What an awesome lineup. We don't have a lot of Ishikawa and Ikeda teaming together, and they are fun parejas team with some bickering early, and even Ikeda clotheslining Ishikawa when he was putting on an Indian deathlock (to give the move extra oomph). We get some good grappling from all four guys before it predictably devolves into a orgy of brutality. Hashi and Ikeda were the fulcrum of one of my favorite matches of all time, and we get to see them match up again, smashing their heads into each other in sickening ways. There is also some great Mashimo vs. Ishikawa matchups including maybe the best ground and pound I can remember seeing in a pro wrestling match. Ishikawa just unloads with punches square to the eye and jaw. This has more of a frantic style then some of the other FUTEN tags, and instead of ending in a long face off we have more near falls and tags in and out, including Hashi nearly getting a submission by touching Ishikawa's knee to the back of his head in a crazy submission, and Ikeda hitting an all impact superplex, before ending with Ishikawa trapping Hashi in a crazy leg stretch choke combo. You don't usually see Negro Navarro submissions mixed in with face kicking and punching and it was awesome here.

ER: Ishikawa and Ikeda teaming is a rare treat, something that's happened less than 10 times over the 25+ years these two have been running together. The most recent actually happened in the current cursed year of 2020, with them pairing off opposite Daniel Makabe & Chris Ridgeway (which is a great match that we reviewed and added to our 2020 MOTY List). This was the last time they tagged before that, and I like that they also treat it like a rare event. They act like a bickering Oscar and Felix, arguing over who is going to start the match, both putting one leg through the ropes to the apron while waving their hand at the other to get in there, culminating with Ikeda agreeing to start, shaking Ishikawa's hand, but then Irish whipping Ishikawa into the match only to see Ishikawa reverse his whip and send Ikeda into a Mashimo boot. It's a funny gag that you don't go into a Futen show expecting to see. This match also gives us (I believe) our only Ishikawa/Hashi pairing, and it's fitting that the match comes down to the two of them. A lot of this didn't feel super Futen to me, but not really in a bad way.

We didn't get the insane level of violence we get from many Futen main event tags, and some strikes felt a little more held back than normal. Mashimo's kicks were more often grazing over the top of Ikeda's head, and Hashi's headbutts don't have the same hollow coconut thump that really lets me know that brains are getting scrambled. But I don't need all that to have a good time, and I thought we got a really fantastic Ishikawa performance. I loved his work with Mashimo and Hashi, and the mounted punches traded by he and Mashimo were my absolute favorite part of the match. Ishikawa works some cool deathlock variations on Mashimo to wear him down, and then throws the gnarliest mounted punches right to Mashimo's neck. These looked like they could have been immaculately worked punches, but it also wouldn't much surprise me if he was just punching Mashimo in the neck. Either way, Mashimo manages to turn it and immediately throws some receipts right to Ishikawa's jaw and temple. We get some real tight saves, and the final showdown with Ishikawa and Hashi is fun, and I thought for certain Hashi was getting the tap when he broke out a leg dislocating stump puller. Ishikawa's final sub looked like a finishing sub, locking his arm around Hashi's neck while trying to make Hashi's leg boot touch the back of his head, Ikeda desperately holding back Mashimo from making the save. Afterward the Ikeda/Ishikawa alliance melts pretty quickly, but ice sculptures aren't made to last, they're made to be enjoyed while they exist.


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The Fujiwara Family: Complete and Accurate UWF, UWF Reborn, RINGS, PWFG, BattlArts, FUTEN, UFO, BAP

The best of all wrestling, here are all our full show reviews in one place.

1985

UWF 4/23/85

1990

UWF 1/16/90

UWF 2/9/90

UWF 2/27/90

UWF 4/15/90

UWF 5/4/90

UWF 5/28/90

UWF 6/21/90

1991

PWFG 3/4/91

RINGS 5/11/91
PWFG 5/19/91
PWFG 7/26/91

RINGS 8/1/91
PWFG 8/23/91

RINGS 9/14/91
PWFG 9/28/91
PWFG 10/17/91
PWFG 11/3/91

RINGS 12/7/91

1992

PWFG 1/15/92

PWFG 2/24/92
PWFG 4/19/92
PWFG 5/15/92

PWFG 6/5/92
PWFG 7/27/92
PWFG 8/15/92
PWFG 9/2/92
PWFG 10/4/92
PWFG 12/5/92

1993

PWFG 6/1/93
PWFG 7/21/93
PWFG 9/23/93

PWFG 10/29/93

1994

PWFG 2/28/94

PWFG 6/4/94
PWFG 9/28/94
PWFG 9/13/94
PWFG 10/31/94

1995

PWFG 5/19/95

PWFG 6/18/95

PWFG 8/12/95
PWFG 8/26/95

PWFG 11/19/95

1996

Battlarts 10/2/96

Battlarts 10/4/96
PWFG 9/23/96

Battlarts 12/21/96

Battlarts 12/25/96

1997

Battlarts 1/21/97

Battlarts 3/13/97

Battlarts 3/14/97

Battlarts 11/5/97

1998

Battlarts 4/19/98

Battlarts 4/28/98

Battlarts 5/10/98

1999

UFO 3/14/99

2000

Battlarts 3/25/00

2005

FUTEN 4/24/05

2007

Battlarts 7/21/07

2009

FUTEN 4/9/09

Battlarts 1/10/09

Battlarts 2/15/09

Battlarts 4/12/09

Battlarts 7/5/09

Battlarts 7/26/09

Battlarts 8/3/09 Show 1

Battlarts 8/3/09 Show 2

Battlarts 9/6/09

Battlarts 12/6/09

2010

BattlArts 1/17/10

FUTEN 4/22/10

FUTEN 5/3/10

FUTEN 6/27/10

FUTEN 7/25/10

FUTEN 9/26/10

FUTEN 10/24/10

FUTEN 11/24/10

FUTEN 12/19/10

2011

FUTEN 1/30/11

FUTEN 7/18/11

2012

FUTEN 1/12/12

 

2019

BAP 10/22/19

2020

BAP 2/11/20

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I'm on the Trigger Plus I Got the FUTEN Sword: FUTEN 7/18/11

I am cataloging all of the BattlArts and FUTEN shows we have reviewed, and realized this was out there but somehow unreviewed.

Katsumi Usuda vs. Kotaru Nasu

PAS: Nasu was a Style-E guy and a perfectly solid unspectacular opponent for Usuda. Usuda provides most of the highlights here, unsurprisingly, popping Nasu right in the temple with a high kick, doing a great looking Fujiwara double leg twist counter into a kneebar and an incredible leg trip into a Fujiwara for the tap. Nasu did have a couple of nice near falls on knockdowns and a cross arm breaker, but this was a fun Usuda show. He is really a guy who can deliver against almost anyone.

ER: I thought Nasu was the perfect kind of opponent for Usuda, the kind of lower ranked guy that Usuda is great at almost losing to. For his end, Nasu kicked the hell out of Usuda and looked like he came real close to tapping him, and if a guy throws hard kicks and can lock in a sub that looks like it can get a tap, Usuda can take that guy to his career zenith. Usuda comes into the match with his expected bored expression, totally underestimating Nasu, and after a couple of minutes he appears correct in his underestimation. Usuda is really special, and I love how his selling in this match was based entirely on facials and not, you know, selling a limb. His face starts off in his classic resting sleepy expression, and within 7 minutes it's total panic. Nasu kept doing more damage with each set of kicks, and looks like he was a few newtons away from stinging Usuda on a kick to the spine. His subs keep coming closer and closer to tapping Usuda, and Usuda's grasps for the ropes start looking more and more desperate, and we get a great shot of his eyes darting to every single rope in the ring. When he makes an escape he didn't think he'd made, he realizes that the time for fucking around is over. He wastes Nasu with a kick as Nasu charged into the corner, and I love in fights when a guy *almost* getting a tap causes him to throw strategy out the window. He came so close to that win that he's now too focused on finishing and the blinders leave him wide open. The finish was so sick, Usuda sweeping Nasu's left leg from his back to trip him to the mat, expertly swinging his leg over to shift his weight and grab the arm, then wrenching that arm into the ugliest Fujiwara. It's one of those submission finishes where the guy who gets tapped knows he's in the quicksand the second he steps into it, knows his only option is lose quick or lose slightly less quick. Usuda!


Ryuji Hijikata vs. Bison TAGAI

PAS: This was Tagai representing BattlArts taking on Hijikata who was repping FUTEN, and he repped the hell out of FUTEN, landing a nasty cheap shot headbutt, and some sick punches to the ear. Tagai would fight back with some takedowns and grappling, but he was in over his head. Hijikata hit a couple of great looking sole butt kicks to the stomach, including turning his back after it landed like Steph Curry, before he made Tagai's knee touch his ear for the tap.

ER: Hijikata is a beast. He was taking harsh beatings in BattlArts when Bison was a teen. This guy was toughened up a decade before Bison got started, and even if I don't remember Hijikata winning matches in the late 90s Batt I loved, being a regular there in that area is a lasting badge of toughness. Early in this match there is a moment that would go on an all time best Futen video. Both men are reaching for a knucklelock and TAGAI punches Hijikata straight in the face. Hijikata is rattled and backed up, but quickly comes to and decides TAGAI needed to be taught a rest of match lesson. He backs TAGAI up, headbutts him right in the eye, then throws a right hook to his ear that sends TAGAI to the mat. From there it's just Hijikata stalking and beating TAGAI while TAGAI backs into him and has an I Fucked Up look on his face for much of the rest of the match. He fires back with some slaps but Hijikata is letting him do it, and he's walking through those strikes like all the old 90s BattlArts guys walk through strikes. Those mule kicks hit like two mules, and the finishing submission was disgusting. Hijikata hyperextend's TAGAI's knee up past his head and rides it like one of those guys on Furiosa's metronomes in Fury Road.


Kengo Mashimo vs. SEIKEN

PAS: These are a pair of big boys and stuff was landing hard. SEIKEN rushes Mashimo early and sends him to the floor. Oba is on the sideline and he gives him a talking to, and Mashimo comes in and bulldozes him with hard kicks and punches. Once Oba hyped him up he was a wrecking ball and took SEIKEN out.

ER: Akitoshi Saito feels like a guy who should have made at least a couple Futen appearances and never did. But Mashimo wrestles exactly the way a Futen Saito would wrestle, and it's great. SEIKEN is new to me and he rushes Mashimo to start, blowing him up with quick knees, kicks, and open hands. Once Mashimo gets his pep talk, it's a slow drowning for SEIKEN. Mashimo shows him how actually ineffective his kicks are, and awesomely blocks a spinning heel kick right out of the air with his forearms. Mashimo absorbs strikes, takes slaps as if his face was merely hit merely by a cool breeze, takes kicks to the chest like he's getting a massage, and we get a great moment where SEIKEN nails a spinning heel kick right to Mashimo's chin that sends Mashimo staggering around the ring. From there, Mashimo shows SEIKEN what a leg kick is supposed to look like, absolutely chopping down that tree, dumps him with some very hard back suplexes and Germans, and from there it's a race to see what head kick is going to be the one that makes SEIKEN stay down instead of stand up at 9. 


Mitsuya Nagai vs. Takeshi Ono

PAS: This is a cool scrap which was worked like a speed versus power boxing match. Every shot Nagai threw and every submission he put on had a ton of force. He cut Ono in half with kicks and nearly tore off his limbs. Ono would respond with activity, none of his shots thudded like the much bigger Nagai, but he peppered him with quick punches and kicks, and spun into fast submissions. He even ends up blooding Nagai's ear with fast right hands before falling to a nasty submission which saw Nagai twisting him into taffy. Really cool fight, Ono is an all-time great and any chance to see him is a treasure.


Daisuke Ikeda/Manabu Suruga vs. Yuki Ishikawa/Munenori Sawa

PAS: FUTEN tags are on a short list of the greatest things ever produced by wrestling. This wasn't a top tier FUTEN tag, but even mid-tier FUTEN tags are top tier in a list of all other things. The structure of a FUTEN tag is lots of back and forth violence with all four guys leading to a one on one battle between two wrestlers until one wrestler is demolished. The one on one battle at the end of this match was Sawa versus Suruga which is the least of the possible face offs, both those guys are fine, and the end run was cool, but you really don't want Ishikawa and Ikeda to be on the bench in the fourth quarter. The Ikeda versus Ishikawa stuff here was more of a teaser, but damn it was appropriate, Ishikawa threw a punch to Ikeda's head which sounded like a two by four hitting a pumpkin. Ikeda kicked him right between the top of the jaw and the end of the ear, it was as great and as lamentable as it always is. I always enjoy Sawa's handspeed and I liked how he tried to use that speed against the heavier hitting of Suruga and Ikeda. I wanted a nastier KO then I got, but I still just enjoyed the hell out of watching every second of this.

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Quick Fast We Reflect Like the Sky Be Blue True, FUTEN Saga Continues

Futen 12/19/10

PAS: This is a FUTEN show which sort of slipped through the cracks when I was reviewing all of it back in the day. It isn't new exactly, but it is new to Segunda Caida.

Taro Nohashi vs. NARITA

PAS: Man if you don't watch FUTEN for a while, it can be pretty jarring to get back into this world. Nohashi is a MPRO guy who worked as a mini-Shinzaki, but that isn't what he is doing here, here he is taking his head and smashing it violently into another persons head. NARITA works like a kickboxer, throwing punches and kicks and they look pretty great, more fast then really powerful. They are however powerful enough to bust up Nohashi mouth so it looks like he is brushing his teeth with ketchup. There are some real moments of brutal greatness, including Nohashi thrusting the back of his head into NARITA's face to break a german suplex attempt, and a cool punches vs. headbutts finish run, with Nohashi's head being the victor.

ER: Killer opener, just give these Futen lunatics 6 minutes to open a card and they got nuts. I'd never seen NARITA before, but early on he's throwing evil hammer fist blows to the top and back of Nohashi's head, and essentially he had me at hello. NARITA was punching the way I hoped Suruga would have punched later in the card, really teeing off on Nohashi's face. Loved all the stuff Phil mentioned with Nohashi using his head - literally - to even things out, thought NARITA threw some really great low angle rolling German suplexes, and the matching ending half crab that Nohashi locked on was disgusting (I kept clenched jaw waiting for one of NARITA's bones to snap out of his ever bending leg). Setting the tone for a Futen card can't be easy on the body, but these two did it.

Mitsuya Nagai vs. Kazuki Okubo

PAS: This was basically two guys exchanging thick kicks and working leg locks. Nagai is a crowbar from way back but it is really hard to stand out throwing hard kicks in FUTEN.  Okuba was fun in U-Style, but never that dynamic. These were hard, but we got Ikeda on deck. Solid stuff, but nothing which passes the high bar FUTEN sets.

Kengo Mashimo vs. Rui Hiugaji

ER: I thought this was pretty great until we hit a sort of amusing rough patch down the finishing stretch, but even that was redeemed by how both men handled it. Mashimo is a total legend in Futen and throws some deadly kicks and knees, really feels like this is headed towards being a Futen squash. Then Hiugaji catches a leg and drops into a kneebar, and suddenly we have an opening. Mashimo does a real nice job of selling his leg, and we get a couple cool moments where he's in the middle of a kick flurry only to have his knee buckle under him, allowing Hiugaji to pounce again. Both guys really try to take a couple years off the other with nasty brainbusters, Mashimo hits a killer Saito suplex, and Hiugaji pays him back later by absolutely launching Mashimo with a German suplex that flips him over and lands him right on his forehead!! My god!!! The awkwardness comes with Hiugaji takes an eternity to lock in a figure 4 (after seemingly getting confused by how to lock one in), and ends up locking in one of the weakest submissions ever seen in Futen. Mashimo redeems it by repeatedly pointing out his lousy application and laughing about how terrible Hiugaji's figure 4 is. The criticism was certainly warranted, and Mashimo took a potentially ugly situation and made it work. I liked Hiugaji's fighting spirit during the finish run, as Mashimo kept putting him down with high kicks and then standing by as Hiugaji fought slowly back to his feet. I wish Mashimo would have really put some extra mustard on the final couple kicks, but I liked the finish overall and dug what they did with the layout.

PAS: Mashimo was really great at throwing those thudding Hashimoto baseball bat wheel kicks to the stomach, and he hit a couple of nasty ones to the temple. I also dug his hooks to the ribs, I imagine Hiugaji had some really troubling urinations for the next week after this match. Hiugaji seemed a bit out of his element, I liked the german suplex, but that figure four was pretty embarrassing and he never delivered the heat he needed to, you got to hit a guy back if he is strafing you like that. It picked up at the ending, and got pretty fun, I agree with Eric if you are going to do a KO finish in FUTEN, you had really better come close to actually knocking your opponent unconscious, it's like doing a blood stoppage in lucha, that guy better need a transplant after the match.

Manabu Suruga vs. Makoto Hashi

ER: This was kind of a Futen version of a modern indy moves match, with more strikes trading than moves trading (but still some moves trading). Makoto Hashi is one of the weirder guys to come up through the AJPW system. He's a big lumpy boy with his waterbed body and hot dog lips and 1 minute haircut and hatred of foreheads, and he was always somehow the 4th man on the totem pole who also happened to headbutt people. Futen really gave him the chance to open up and unleash violence, and he really comes off like a total sadist. Here's a match where he busts his own head open by swinging it as hard as he can at Suruga's forehead, repeatedly. They abandon the matwork fairly early in the match, and things take an entirely different turn when Hashi dumps Suruga brutally with a Ki Krusher type driver. The long home stretch is these two smacking each other, and Suruga really throws some of the sharpest and fastest kicks, blasting Hashi in the chest and legs, really swinging. He also weirdly overworked his punches, like he was some Lance Storm type who was going to verbally take pride in throwing punches that don't crack an egg, and it's weird because he's doing it to a man who broke open his own head smashing it against things. Fucking PUNCH that dude in the face!! I liked a lot of the strike breakdown here, and loved Hashi's backfists, these hard awful fists pounding right into Suruga's neck. This all felt like a more interesting version of the current New Japan bomb fests.

PAS: Hashi in FUTEN was such a shooting star, he had 16 matches there, and we only have seen five (and there are some killer stuff we haven't seen, Hashi vs. Ikeda, vs. Mashimo teamed with Mashimo vs. Ikeda/Ishikawa, looking at FUTEN results is a form of masochism). He arrived in FUTEN after years of NOAH undercard stuff where he was only sporadically featured, and made himself right at home, driving his lumpen head violently into the faces of fellow wrestlers. Hashi headbutts are more violent looking then the headbutts that put Shibata into a coma, it is really hard to watch in the best way. Suruga is very competent and is a great B-Side for a Hashi geek show. He really whips kicks into the knee and it does a great job of slowing the match down and injecting some real danger into the match. Great stuff, the kind of thing FUTEN did regularly but would dominate 2019 MOTY posts if it happened today.

Daisuke Ikeda/Katsumi Usuda vs. Yuki Ishikawa/Takeshi Ono

ER: It's crazy that this tag (and this show) has been just sitting out there not being reviewed on this site. This is another classic battle of violence, divided into 3 Acts: Ikeda and Ishikawa torturing each other, Ono and Usuda torturing each other, and the super amusing Act 3 that is just Ikeda and Ishikawa breaking up nasty submissions. Ikeda and Ishikawa have the weirdest friendship in wrestling. I mean, I assume they are friends. Is it more weird if we find out they hate each other, or if they're best friends for life? I love their dynamic (strong opinion there), love how Ikeda looks absolutely unbeatable for long stretches, and how Ishikawa is the ultimate punching bag who can turn things on an instant. Ikeda and Ishikawa is never not a fun mess, and I love our later period match-ups between them; both have this beleaguered, tired intensity, doing the dance again, Ishikawa eating leg kicks and doing his insane strategy of eating two kicks to the chest only to catch the third, Ikeda getting his joints bent horribly by kneebars. But I was really excited for the Ono/Usuda portions of this, loved the cold Terminator precision from Ono. Ono locks on submissions quicker than maybe any man in wrestling history. The way he quickly sweeps Usuda's legs and a split second later had both of Usuda's arms wrapped tightly behind his back was a thing of beauty, and I don't think I've ever witnessed a faster or more efficient octopus hold applied by anybody. Usuda lingers for a second and suddenly Ono just has every single limb tied up and being stretched in a different direction. Both guys keep getting locked into nasty holds, Usuda tying up a few awesome figure 4 leglocks, the most shootstyle figure 4s you've seen, and our home stretch is an absolute blast of comedy and violence. Ono and Usuda are locked in eternal kneebar struggle, and Ishikawa keeps trying to knock Usuda loose while Ikeda is knocking Ono loose. Neither man wants to break, but the older guys force them to, except for the times that these savages just keep holding on and refusing to break. Ishikawa is dropping knees on Usuda's head, Ikeda is headbutting Ono, neither one wants to break, and it's great. We get moments of Ishikawa and Ikeda looking at each other while their wards are giving each other knee injuries for life, like "what more can we do here? We raised monsters!" It was the kind of tilt we don't usually get in these wars, and I thought it worked great.

PAS: This felt like a parejas match with normal partners Ikeda and Ono and Ishikawa and Usuda which was an interesting twist on this matchup. The main dance partners were still Ikeda vs. Ishikawa and Usuda vs. Ono and they were all some great dances. FUTEN tag matches usually build to these long one on one battles of attrition, surprisingly Ikeda vs. Ishikawa was used at the set up battle to the final stretch of Ono vs. Usuda. The Ikeda vs. Ishikawa sections were unsurprisingly stellar, with both guys hurling horrid abuse at the other. The final Usuda vs. Ono waltz was great too, a great mix of slick submissions and big KO shots. I loved their first exchange with Usuda trying for the Fujiwara Boston crab counter, and Ono just stomping him right in the head. Usuda was able to find openings to slip in and crank submissions, while Ono would throw them on with blistering speed. Ikeda and Ishikawa would just wander in and break submissions in the nastiest way possible, at one point Ikeda headbutts Ono right in the back of his head to break up a submission, Ishikawa is dropping shin bone to the nose kneedrops. It has to totally suck to lock on a submission in a FUTEN tag. Every one of these matches is a treasure.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DAISUKE IKEDA

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2009 Match of the Year

Daisuke Ikeda/Takeshi Ono vs. Manabu Suruga/Takahiro Oba FUTEN 4/26/09

PAS: The kind of harrowingly violent shootstyle tag war which FUTEN mastered. Oba is kind of a lanky goofy guy who has some big impressive throws, kind of like Otsuka stretched out on a rack, Surugu is the former Manabu Hara, who was never the most electric BattlArts guy, but perfectly willing to engage in a war, and Ikeda and Ono are Ikeda and Ono, two of the best to ever do it. Lots of great tag work early by Ikeda and Ono as they work over Suruga and Oba's legs like hyper violent Anderson's. These matches usually build to long one on one violent war of attrition sections. We get two of them here, the first is a great Ono vs. Oba battle with Ono fighting off his back, locking in submissions while dodging Oba's stomps and leaps, it ends with a big fight over a grounded octopus, while Manabu is fighting desperately against Ikeda to make the save. We then get a violent Ikeda vs. Suruga section with both guys landing hellacious shots and both end up glassy eyed and spent. FUTEN maybe my favorite wrestling promotion ever, and this was the best thing going in 2009 for sure.

ER: This was a match with a lot of little stories going on throughout it, with some cool shifts in control, and all four guys getting great moments in the spotlight. I've seen this tag several times, but not for a few years now. For some reason this time I got really invested in Oba's arc. Oba is pretty easily the weakest contributor in the match, but I think that's more a testament to how strong the match is, that his performance here is the weak link. He starts the match as a bumbling goof, erases that image with a great hot tag that makes him look like a real badass, then by the time he's doing comedy stuff again he's practically a folk hero, the comedy coming from a place of confidence now instead of incompetence. It was a cool mid match transition and really added to things, but the others got those moments too. Ikeda was confident veteran who got a couple of awesome late match fighting babyface moments, the first after Suruga savagely drops him with a Tiger Driver '91. It looked like something that someone shouldn't get up from, but Ikeda barely does and his new vulnerability makes him more of a hero. Ono is the great lost BattlArts guy who basically started working only quarterly after Batt, and always looked as good as ever. Here he gets to show off his great speed and precise striking, and contributes huge to the drama with an awesome save for Ikeda. Suruga came in at the end of the Batt run and is much younger than Ikeda/Ono, but here he gets to show that he can hang with the vets, and peaks with the stretch run where he looks like he can destroy Ikeda singlehandedly, dropping him mightily with two German suplexes and that crushing Tiger Driver. All men work cool submission moments, like Ikeda muscling his way out of a headlock by moving his neck behind Oba's back, or Ikeda getting his arm stomped on, or Suruga getting his knee yanked around; but we got cool pro wrestling moments too, none more pro wrestling than Ikeda and Ono pulling off a Doomsday Device in a shootstyle match, and Ikeda dropping one of the nastier post-Hashimoto brainbusters, or Suruga dragging his body to finally tag out after taking some ruthless shots, and then collapsing on the ring apron to recover. And of course every moment in between these moments is peppered with hard leg kicks, clonking Ikeda headbutts, fast Ono rabbit punches, and full body Suruga strikes. A match where everyone came out of this looking powerful, a unique and awesome tag match deserving of being the 2009 champ.


ALL TIME MOTY LIST

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2010 Match of the Year

Daisuke Ikeda/Takahiro Oba v. Makoto Hashi/Kengo Mashimo FUTEN 10/24/10

PAS: A truly transcendent piece of wrestling violence. The match starts with a little jiving and taunting, especially by Ikeda and Obo, although in true FUTEN fashion that includes a teeth loosening Ikeda kick to Mashimo's face. I also really liked how Oba used his taunt as a way to feint out Hashi and get a takedown. The middle section of this match was pretty damn great too, with each pairing getting a chance to stretch out a bit and show some things. Oba had some truly impressive grappling exchanges with Hashi as they were grabbing limbs and throats and twisting and cracking. We also got to see Ikeda and Mashimo kick each other in the face, thighs and ribs, Mashimo and Oba do their thing and some teases of the Ikeda v. Hashi hellstorm yet to come.

Then like most of these matches, it comes down to two guys battling it out, and sweet Christ on the Cross dying for our sins, do they battle it out. Hashi and Ikeda just rip into each other with about the most brutal exchanges I have ever seen. The final showdown is basically Lawler v. Dutch with withering headbutts instead of punches. It was truly vile. They have a very cool mini story here, unlike most back and forth strike exchanges in Puro, this wasn't a battle of equals. Ikeda is the big bad killer, he has been for a long time, still when he is cracking skulls with Hashi he is being outpunched. He is like a boxer who has finally run into someone with heavier hands. He can't go toe to toe, but never learned to do anything else. Early in this showdown he takes a sickening headbutt and stumbles to his corner, Oba slaps him hard in the face to say "You are Daisuke By God Ikeda, this is your house, there no tagging out, go beat that motherfuckers ass." By the end of the showdown, we see Oba in the corner cringing, you can see him thinking "He is going to die in that ring, I should have let him tag out." The FUTEN camerawork was great here, we get some amazing closeups of the bruised and bloody foreheads of both guys, it was pretty spectacular. When Chris Nowitski autopsies their brains, they are going to look like spoiled bananas. The ending of this was epic, Hashi hits a big slap, and one final headbutt dropping Ikeda. They go for a ten count, and as Ikeda raises at 9, you get this great shot of an exhausted Hashi. He has this terrified look on his face, he unloaded it all and the monster didn't stay down. It didn't matter what followed, Ikeda walked through hell and mentally broke him. Professional wrestling at it's absolute best.

ER: Man Phil has been crushing some of these MOTY reviews. He covered most anything you could love about this match, but it really is something else. This is so different from so many other, similar matches, even within the fed itself. The structure is so odd and cool. You get all the different match ups that don't often happen, and then you get the king willing to die on his cross for a long, long home stretch. But it's not Mashimo and Hashi cutting off the ring, it's this wild perseverance that is encouraged by Oba, and not believed by Mashimo or Hashi. Well, eventually they believe. Ikeda is able to portray both vulnerable and unbeatable all at once, and this is an amazing performance. He had a couple of beasts to work with, as Mashimo has all sorts of kicks from weird angles and throws some of the sharpest knees you've seen. He gets nervous first though, seeing that insanity in Ikeda's eyes and leaving things up to Hashi. And Hashi is a monster. He's got this weird soft body that you know could also rip you in half, an epic fail Minoru Suzuki haircut, and this weird feminine swamp thing face; oh, and also an ability to headbutt the math skills out of Ikeda. But this is much more than guys stiffing each other. There is palpable drama behind these strikes, and the more you keep wondering why one of them is standing back up for more, the more you cheer them on. Ikeda's staggering around, going on muscle memory; Oba is rooting him on after laying a lot of groundwork early; Mashimo tired himself out trying to take down the minotaur; and now Hashi in his weird dominant cynicism is left to finish him off. Just as Ikeda is vulnerable and unbeatable, Hashi is masterful at being cocky and nervous all at once. The forehead altering headbutts stand out here, but it's all good. The strikes are killer, the throws are often unexpected, and the stand ups are filled with drama. Just all out classic pro wrestling.

ALL TIME MOTY LIST

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QUICK TO STICK MY FUTEN SWORD RIGHT IN YOUR NAVEL - FUTEN 4/24/05

PAS: Pretty cool to wake up and see some FUTEN show up on the internet. The main event I have seen before, but I don't remember seeing the undercard, and we get a Hiroyuki Ito sighting which is always exciting.

ER: ^^^ Phil wrote that a couple of years ago, before starting to review this FUTEN show. Up until that point all that existed of this show was the glorious main event. Then one day many years later the entire show popped up for our viewing pleasure. Phil started the review, and here we are finishing it.

Katsumi Usuda vs. Kota Ibushi

PAS: Really fun Usuda performance, who worked this like a poor man's Fujiwara. Working the young kid through some mat exchanges, milking drama off near KO's and slipping in a flash submission when it looked like all was lost. Usuda doesn't have Fujiwara's charisma (really who does) but he has that match structure down. Usuda is really great at pace changes, speeding up the match and slowing it down. There is a great part here where they are sort of sparring looking for openings and Usuda catches Ibushi with a solid shot to the chops, the match immediately kicks up a gear with Ibushi reeling and throwing shots desperately, while Usuda swarms to get the KO, when it doesn't come, the match slows down a bit again.

ER: I really liked Ibushi here. You know going in that Usuda is going to be money, but I don't know how decade+ old Ibushi was, and here he was really good. Was he good because he was standing opposite a man willing to take nasty kicks to painful areas? That was some of it, but this wasn't Usuda helping a blind man cross the street. Usuda clearly paced things but Ibushi was awesomely along for the ride. His kick flurries were manic and brutal, and the way he mixed up strikes to keep Usuda off balance was glorious. At one point he's lacing in with kicks to the body and chest, throwing slaps to the face, and Usuda is taking all sorts of punishment and the moment he starts to figure out some timing and advance, and Ibushi just surprises him with a front kick to the gut. I loved all of Usuda's flash subs (catching the arm into a Fujiwara was great) and I loved Ibushi sending Usuda on the run with kicks. One great moment where Usuda is on the ropes trying to shield himself and Ibushi just rushes for the attack. He gets paid back later with Usuda taking him out with nasty low leg kicks (watch how great Ibushi's sell is on his wobble legs). Awesome match.

Takeshi Ono vs. Hiroyuki Kotsubo

PAS: Big waste of an Ono match. He is such an incredible wrestler and shows up so rarely on video that it is a bummer to see him saddled with such a load in such a short match. Only about 4 minutes and some awful looking offense from Kotsubo, that was one of the worst clotheslines I have ever seen. Ono sells for a sec and then decides to just punch this clown out. His finishing flurry was cool, but only a taste of what he can do.

ER: This was weird but I think could have been good with some time. Ono is a good enough worker that he can drag a good match out of someone like Kotsubo if given enough time to tell some kind of story. This wasn't enough time to tell any kind of story, so what we were left with was just a short match and an awkward opponent. Kotsubo did have SOME skill, just limited. Ono is a guy who can work around limited skill. He didn't really get the chance to do that here. Kotsubo is clearly some kind of amateur wrestler, as his opening takedown and single leg floatover looked really good. But he tried to do more than that and that's when things looked uglier. For a wrestler he didn't have a very good suplex, so when he german'd Ono it was supposed to be one of those match turning point suplexes where Ono does a flip over bump and sells it as a potential KO blow, except the suplex basically looks like a rolling cradle and Ono sells it as the KO anyway. Yeesh. Then Ono gets up and kicks the shit out of him like we all wanted to begin with. Yep. We all realized "man if this was gonna only go 4 minutes, then this should have just been Ono giving this dude spinning backfists for 4 minutes."

Ikuto Hidaka & Minoru Fujita vs. Kyosuke Sasaki & Hajime Moriyama

ER: Team BattlArts/Zero-1 vs. Team U-Style! Those names all mean something to puro kids these days, right? I haven't seen much of Team U-Style, but they seemed perfectly fine here. Bland at times, kick party fun the next. Once they started kicking the veterans things got fun, and Hidaka and Fujita suddenly getting desperate against the young turks was a nice moment. We get some nice spirited moments, like Fujita and Sasaki breaking into a spontaneous slap war, Hidaka breaking out a trippy grapevine leg sub that would make Negro Navarro drool, and an awesome finishing sub where he rolls a snug double leg into an almost Texas cloverlead/dual ankle lock with several points of painful leverage. I had no idea what I was looking at, but I loved it. Match as a whole was more like several separate vignettes. It didn't totally build to a finish, but instead was a kind of series of restarts. Which is fine, and this style sometimes lends itself to that, but taken in it's segmented form it was overall fine.

PAS: I really enjoyed this. Always liked the Fujita/Hidaka tag team they were one of my favorite parts of mid 90's Japanese indy wrestling. Cool to see them pop up ten years later and still as slick. The U-Style dudes are all beasts on the mat and I loved how fast and slick all of their rolling with Hidaka and Fujita was. Lots of grabbing and twisting of limbs in nasty ways. Hidaka especially was on one, just breaking out crazy nutso limb locks one after the other, the U-Style guys were throwing the kind of thumping shots appropriate on the undercard of Ikeda v. Ishikawa. Very cool stuff.

Hiroyuki Ito vs. Manabu Hara

ER: This never totally got going for me. Similar to the previous match it felt like there were too many momentum breaks. A lot of kick, down, count, back up. Sub, rope break, separation, back up. There were moments where it threatens to get really good, where the violence almost broke out from the pack. That can be tough on shows like this, with several tough guys, all trying to out-tough the other to be more memorable. At one point Ito rushed in with a bunch of fast and nasty right kicks to the chest and body and it got really exciting, like Ito snapped and got tired of screwing around and Hara was going to respond with brutal kicks of his own. And he kinda does. But soon they're back to breaks and separations. At the end of the match it felt like they went out to do a Ikeda/Ishikawa match, except nowhere near as good, and right before an actual Ikeda/Ishikawa match. Just not enough substance here.

PAS: I really liked this. Ito is a weird wrestling genius who showed up in shoot feds in the early 2000s had awesome matches from the beginning and then disappeared again. He was one of my favorite U-Style guys and had a great short Big Mouth Loud run. This wasn't a high end Ito match, but it had a lot of the trappings which made him such a compelling wrestler. I loved how he brought the match up and down in intensity, and how he would respond to Hara's fast kicks with one or two thumping ones. There were a lot of rope breaks, but I enjoyed how the worked in and out of them, Ito was great at throwing quick kicks off of breaks.This was more U-Style then FUTEN as it was more of a chess match then a harrowing war. The kind of match which isn't done anymore, and I really enjoyed watching it.

Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda

ER: This is a legendarily violent match between two of the biggest badasses in wrestling. I think this is actually the most violent match these two have ever had, and my lord think of the ground that covers. This match is so violent that I'm not actually sure how neither of them ended up KO'd at some point. Are they this good at close-up magic? You know it's going to be a barnburner as both men start the match with their hair at 0.7 on the Big Ern Scale, with Ishikawa's dyed that fashionable blonde/platinum/gray/purple that ladies are into, beating the trend by a decade!  It's possible that he was sporting mermaid hair in whatever FUTEN hasn't shown up by now. And after the hair is checked and being fluffed by the AC, these two men destroy each other for 14 minutes, to the point where some parts of the match get difficult to watch.

Ishikawa is at his most violent here, punching Ikeda in the throat - regularly - punching him in the ribs, hyperextending his arm in an awful armbar after already damaging it with a hammerlock. Watching Ikeda rub his inner elbow while trying to flex after breaking that armbar is either next level selling, or the look of a man whose elbow is now going to be cranky every time it rains in Tokyo. And for this lifetime of elbow pain, he decides to kick Ishikawa square in the forehead. A lot. He kicks him in the neck with his left leg, and then kicks him in the ear with his right leg to catch him on the way down. He punts him right in the head and face several times. I actually looked away at one point. Every time either man got to his feet looked like a legitimate struggle, and sometimes I rooted for them to stay down. Yet once I begged for Ishikawa to stay down, he would rally, and nail Ikeda with elbows and more punches. Ishikawa locks on a choke at one point and we hear Ikeda gurgling. Mouths get bloodied. Elbows get thrown to the back of heads. Ikeda clotheslines Ishikawa in the side of the neck. Ishikawa enziguiris Ikeda in the mouth. I don't know what kind of relationship these two men have outside of a wrestling ring, but their professional wrestling relationship certainly blossomed into a strange thing that would be impossible to explain to any of your co-workers. This match is a horrific masterpiece. I think it's the best singles between the two men, making it the best singles match of one of my favorite match ups in wrestling history. These two perfected a style that few could handle, and few would want to try.

PAS: I am not sure where this match stands it the pantheon of Ikeda v. Ishikawa matches. This is the most violent, but also the most simplistic. You want simplistic and violent from Ikeda v. Ishikawa and the fact that these are two guys who have lost some of their athleticism is part of the appeal. It feels more like a hellacious battle from two guys who have already taken large pieces out of each other over the years. They had some nice wrestling scrambles, but every scramble was a set up for a violent attack. Ishikawa's punches were pretty unbelievable, they hit so hard that it actually sounded sweetened. Meanwhile Ikeda is sprinting across the ring and trying to Janakowski Ishikawa's head through the uprights. There is a section near the end where a glassey eyed Ishikawa blood dripping out of his mouth like he had a root canal, is just dropping Ikeda on his head,  can't help but think "what the hell am I watching?"  A lot of the stiff Puro wrestling today is loaded with guys trying to prove how tough they are by not selling, in this match they unloaded holy hellfire on each other, but every move took a toll, they weren't ignoring the pain to prove they were tough, the felt every bit of the agony and kept moving forward.

ER: Ikeda/Ishikawa is a true epic, and after talking it over Phil and I decided to add it as the 2005 rep on our All Time MOTY List. What 2005 matches could challenge it?!


ONGOING ALL TIME MOTY LIST

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DAISUKE IKEDA

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Daisuke Ikeda is Getting Restless, And Once Again a Nation

Daisuke Ikeda/Takeshi Ono v. Hikari Sato/Kengo Mashimo FUTEN 1/22/12-EPIC

PAS: FUTEN tags may be my single favorite form of entertainment, I get really excited when The Mountain Goats drop a new single, or there is a new Breaking Bad or George Pelecanos Novel, but nothing like how jazzed I get to see a brand new Ikeda and Ono kick the fuck out of some dudes event.

This is right up there with the classics of this genre. Sato hasn't done much for me outside of FUTEN and Mashimo is similarly hit and miss, but they are right there ready to roll in this setting. The opening sections of this are really good, with Ono breaking out some very cool mat reversals and Ikeda wandering in and cracking people,. Most of the FUTEN tags build to one longish almost singles match finish run, here we get two of them. First Sato and Ikeda deliver a B+ version of the brain injury headbutt exchange from the Hashi tag. Then we get an amazing Ono v. Mashimo section with Ono cementing himself as the best guy in the world who wrestles three times a year. There is a headscissors, knee to the back of the head, uppercut combo which is jump out of your seat amazing. Mashimo is throwing bombs and unloading with some great suplexes. Right up there with the best matches in the world in 2012.

ER: WHEN will guys in FUTEN main event tags stop trying to put each other in submission holds!? How many times do guys need to be kicked behind their ear or have their shoulder blade kicked by somebody's boot toe to convince them that it's just not worth it? Truthfully, I don't care, because as long as it keeps happening then 1-2 times a year Phil and I get to sync up and squeal and laugh at the misfortune and overall badassery of these guys. Phil's first sentence is dead-on as FUTEN main event tags are one of life's great joys. It's a perfect formula done by men who are perfect within the formula. Ikeda somehow hasn't changed a bit in 15+ years, Mashimo is a guy who looks really great when he's on (and he is certainly on in this one) and Ono is just scary good. The fact that there are probably less than 50 Ono matches since 2000 is a shame, like Tom Waits scaling back his live gigs. What's happened more since 2000: Waits gigs or Ono matches? 15 years from now Ono is going to be working matches against Katsumi Usuda in front of 40 people in an abandoned dance studio, and on the same night Tom Waits will be performing a one-off show in a Vienna museum. Also, by then humans will have heat vision.

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FUTEN is For The Children, We Teach The Children. Puffy is good but FUTEN is the Best-Futen 11/24/10

Ryuji Hijikata v. Kazuki Okubo

These are two of more pedestrian FUTEN guys, and we got a solid if unmemorable undercard FUTEN match. We got some nice looking grappling, some stiff, but not FUTEN stiff kicks. Hijikata is a guy I remember enjoying in BattlArts, but he was kind of juniory with some kind of goofy no selling. They slapped each other for a while and Hijikata hit a suplex and a choke.

Mitsuya Nagai v. Madoka

Madoka is a Beiber haired hairless junior who has irritated me in previous FUTEN shows, Nagai is an ex-RINGS crowbar who almost killed Iziuka a decade ago. This was Nagai cracking the fuck out of Madoka which is exactly how it should be. Madoka didn't bug me that much here, and I actively liked how he sold Nagai's kicks. Finish felt a little flat as it felt they were building to something bigger.

Daisuke Ikeda v. Manabu Suruga

Just a brutal mauling, Ikeda is a threshing machine in this match, by the end of it Suruga's face looked like domestic abuse victim. Surgura was great in this, he was completely overwhelmed and brutalized, but he wanted to go out on his sword. He was winging bombs but in a really desperate frantic way. He hits about a third of them, although he lands some thudders including a couple of square hooks right to Ikeda's jaw, and a Reggie Roby punt which has Ikeda checking his jaw. Still it just temporarily slowed down Ikeda who was Vorheesian, the final beating was uncomfortable to watch. Ikeda is on top of Manabu landing square right hands right to his forehead and nose. At one point Suruga is lying on the mat clawing at Ikeda's leg like Connie Corleone when Carlo got mad. I am not sure if it is an EPIC match, but it is an EPIC spectacle.

Takeshi Ono v. Katsumi Usuda

Ono's amazing 2010 just keeps on rolling. This is our first taste of BattlArts guys returning to FUTEN, it has been a while, but this certainly not the first time Usuda and Ono have tangled and it is great to watch them do a dance. Really awesome workrate match, which had the intensity and pace of a Bantamweight MMA fight. Both guys knew the counters to each guys counter, and they were scrambling for holds and winging shots. It is hard to pull off this kind of back and forth shootstyle without it seeming like some bullshit NOAH juniors match, but these guys did it. The matwork was awesome, feeling like Benzedrine Fujiwara. Usuda was pulling out some sick counters, including a crazy reverse figure four, and Ono wasn't as slick, but in more of a frenzy. Finish was awesome with Ono missing a kick, Usuda grabbing a wastelock, and Ono just spinning around into an Octopus which he took to the ground and pulled Usuda apart like a crab leg. Total blast, everything you would want from this match, maybe the FUTEN singles of the year.

Kengo Mashimo v. Makoto Hashi

A solid back and forth main event between two good wrestlers, but doesn't having the sickening violence or breathtaking technique of previous two matches. Mashimo focuses on landing kicks, and lands some nice ones, while Hashi works headbutts and backfists. There are some crackers, but nothing at the level of Nowitski specials Hashi has thrown in other FUTEN matches. Pretty much houseshow FUTEN, I enjoyed it fine, but even after watching it a couple of times it didn't do anything to stand out.

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COME QUIETLY, FUTEN RULES SOCIETY, BECAUSE OF VARIETY SO MAINTAIN YOUR HIGH ANXIETY- Futen 10/24/10

Manabu Suruga vs Brahman Kei

Really good midcard FUTEN match. I am all the way on board with the Brahman's at this point. They initially irritated me a bit, but the FUTENish aspects in their game are strong enough, that the goofy shit can be forgiven. Here Kei hangs all the way with Suruga in striking and grappling. There are nice submissions and reversals by both guys here, and Kei kicks hard. The finish was very cool with Kei fighting desperately to avoid being J-Drillered, which allows Suruga to use that leverage to lock on the Rings of Saturn instead.

Koichiro Kimura vs Kazuki Okubo

This was more competitive then your normal Kimura match and thus a little more compelling. I especially liked the brutal kicks to the temple Kimura landed on a prone Okuba. Still neither of these guys are particularly charismatic, and Kimura can't really sell. So watchable, but it wasn't good.

Tamon Honda vs Brahman Shu

Another good Brahman's singles match. Shu worked over Honda's leg with nasty kicks, which Honda sold well. This allowed Shu to get some nice nearfalls on submissions before getting wasted by Honda's cool offense. There was a couple of especially nifty counters, Shu lands a nasty triangle out of a powerbomb attempt, which almost puts Honda to sleep. There is also a point where Shut tries to roll into a kneebar and instead get hurled with a german. The delivering of Shu into the eternal torment of Olympic Hell was great too. I love watching Honda do his thing.

Takeshi Ono vs Ryuji Hijikata

This is another entry in Takeshi Ono's best in the world reel. Hijikata has some selling issues, he was kind of bland faced throughout, and there was points were he shrugged off what Ono was throwing at him. Still when it came to throw shots, he threw them, including a nasty big knee, and he did stand right in front of Takeshi Ono and get cracked in the mouth. Ono unloaded the arsenal here, nasty awesome looking submissions including a beautiful Calf Slicer, and an awesome Octopus which he turned to an armbar. His selling was great too, as he really got over Hijikata's offense, as there was some cool KO near falls all about Ono selling desperation. I wouldn't mind Hijikata sticking around for a while to see if he could wash some of the All Japan juniors stench off of him, it isn't off yet though.

Daisuke Ikeda/Takahiro Oba vs Kengo Mashimo/Makoto Hashi

A truly transcendent piece of wrestling violence. This match was as good anything done in this style since the 2008 BattlArts elimination match, and right up there with PARK v. Mesias and Gringos v. Terry/Cerebro/Che for the best thing done this year. The match starts with a little jiving and taunting, especially by Ikeda and Obo, although in true FUTEN fashion that includes a teeth loosening Ikeda kick to Mashimo's face. I also really liked how Oba used his taunt as a way to feint out Hashi and get a takedown. The middle section of this match was pretty damn great too, with each pairing getting a chance to stretch out a bit and show some things. Oba had some truly impressive grappling exchanges with Hashi as they were grabbing limbs and throats and twisting and cracking. We also got to see Ikeda and Mashimo kick each other in the face, thighs and ribs, Mashimo and Oba do their thing and some teases of the Ikeda v. Hashi hellstorm yet to come.

Then like most of these matches, it comes down to two guys battling it out, and sweet Christ on the Cross dying for our sins, do they battle it out. Hashi and Ikeda just rip into each other with about the most brutal exchanges I have ever seen. The final showdown is basically Lawler v. Dutch with withering headbutts instead of punches. It was truly vile. They have a very cool mini story here, unlike most back and forth strike exchanges in Puro, this wasn't a battle of equals. Ikeda is the big bad killer, he has been for a long time, still when he is cracking skulls with Hashi he is being outpunched. He is like a boxer who has finally run into someone with heavier hands. He can't go toe to toe, but never learned to do anything else. Early in this showdown he takes a sickening headbutt and stumbles to his corner, Oba slaps him hard in the face to say "Your are Daisuke By God Ikeda, this is your house, there no tagging out, go beat that motherfuckers ass." By the end of the showdown, we see Oba in the corner cringing, you can see him thinking "He is going to die in that ring, I should have let him tag out." The FUTEN camerawork was great here, we get some amazing closeups of the bruised and bloody foreheads of both guys, it was pretty spectacular. When Chris Nowitski autopsies their brains, they are going to look like spoiled bananas. The ending of this was epic, Hashi hits a big slap, and one final headbutt dropping Ikeda. They go for a ten count, and as Ikeda raises at 9, you get this great shot of an exhausted Hashi. He has this terrified look on his face, he unloaded it all and the monster didn't stay down. It didn't matter what followed, Ikeda walked through hell and mentally broke him. Professional wrestling at it's absolute best.

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ME FEAR NO ONE, OH NO HEAR COME, THE FUTEN SHOGUN, KILLER TO THE EARDRUM- Futen 9/26/10

Takahiro Oba vs Ryuichi Sekine

Oba is basically the 2010s FUTEN Alexander Otsuka. He isn't going to get into a slugfest if he can avoid it, he will grapple the ever living fuck out of you, and he is maybe a little goofy. This was the most serious I have seen Oba, as this match was basically shenanigansless. Sekine plays the role of the firery rookie and while he may be a bit bland, he brought the goods here. Oba dominates early throwing Sekine around and twisting his limbs in painfully looking ways. Sekine gets a great comeback as he is able to get to his feet and throw some nasty kicks which Oba sold great. They have a really exciting end run to the match which ends with Oba escaping a near KO and grabbing a takedown and putting on a vicious kneebar. Excellent match, and a really great performance by Oba who is really becoming a favorite of mine.

Tamon Honda vs Kazuki Okubo

This match was structurally very similar to the first match, with Honda playing the roll of the veteran grappler and Okubo being the younger kicker. Honda had some nice tight holds and throws, his finishing guillotine was especially slick, and he sold his leg well. Still Okubo didn't contribute a ton, and the match never really built to much. Honda is always worth watching but the match was forgettable overall

Koichiro Kimura vs Brahman Shu/Brahman Kei

Kimura is the one FUTEN act I normally don't care for. He has had exclusively lethargic squash matches. He works stiff, but it's FUTEN, you are going to have to bring more to the table. This was by far the best of the Kimura matches however. The two on one aspect amped up the pace of the match, and the Brahman's were great as planes flying around King Kong. They actually got some pretty exiting near falls, and hit some cool double teams. It also seems like they kick harder every month which is something I appreciate.

Makoto Hashi/Manabu Suruga vs Kengo Mashimo/Madoka

This match had 3/4ths awesome FUTEN guys and when those guys matched up with each other it was good stuff. Mashimo vs. Hashi was basically a poor man's precursor to the Hashi vs. Ikeda stuff, full of hairline splitting headbutts and nasty kicks to the legs kidneys and face. Suruga is the blandest of the high end FUTEN guys, but he is a really solid wrestler and especially great at this style. His grappling, kicks, selling is all top notch. Unfortunately the hairless DDT junior with the Beiber hair brought his 4Liiean juniors workrate horseshit into my FUTEN match. Hashi beats him up some, but doesn't beat him up nearly enough. If he is going to do his rope running and flipping, I wan't Hashi to headbutt the algebra out of him. The good was good, but I don't think it outweighed the bad.

Daisuke Ikeda vs Takeshi Ono

Pretty much the wrestling version of Hagler v. Hearns round 1. The bell rings and Ikeda runs right into an Ono right hand and it goes from there. The story of this match is that Ono is the lower ranked member of their tag team (Apparently called Team Taco, Japan is weird) and he is going to throw the kitchen sink to take out Ikeda. Ono is a buzzsaw, throwing vicious punches in bunches square into Ikeda face and body. Ikeda absorbs these shots and fires back with big punches and kicks of his own. The finish is amazing wrestling, they both quickly counte multiple submission attempts, with Ono slipping out and landing a hellacious knee to the back of Ikeda's head, I expected cerebral fluid to fly out of his nostrils. Ono gets mount and starts pounding out Ikeda but gets caught in an awesome armbar from the bottom and is forced to tap. The best under five minute match I have ever seen, even though it was short it was a complete satisfying. Everything I love about FUTEN in one intense blast, the wrestling equivalent of a Bad Brains song.

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ONE WHO JUST REPRESENTS THE FUTEN CLICK, WITH THE GAME AND SOUL, OF AN OLD SCHOOL FLICK- Futen 4/22/10

A mysterious benefactor delivered the April show. It was a great fucking show too.

Mitsuya Nagai v. Shoichi Uchida

This is a competitive squash with Uchida showing some piss and vinegar, but he basically gets overwhelmed. Nagai does twist him in some impressively nasty submissions. There are parts of the match where Uchida looks like a Cirque De Solie contortionist.

Koichi Kimura v. Rui Hiugaji

This is pretty much a squash too, with Kimura taking about 80% of the match and winning. Kimura is a guy who will nastily squash someone, but he did some pretty disinterested selling, and Hiugaji didn't do any of the things which made him compelling in the May match against Hashi. His little drips of offense here were pretty underwhelming, including an Edgeish spear.

Tamon Honda v. Takahiro Oba

Great, great match. Really intense grappling early with Oba looking like he belonged on the mat with the Olympian. There is a great moment where we see every step of Honda setting up an Olympic Hell, from the standing wrist control, the use of that control to take him down, shifting his weight, keylocking the arm, clasping his arms and then the wrench. Sometimes fast is awesome, but slow can be great too. Oba has a great rear naked choke as well, where he really looks like he is going to pop Honda's head off his shoulders. One of my favorite near falls in recent memory with Oba winding up for a big lariat which Honda checks, catches and spins into Hell, just beautiful counter wrestling. Right up there with the best of 2010, and the best of Futen.

Makoto Hashi v. Taro Nohashi

One of the better under five minutes matches I can remember. Nohashi jumps him before the bell and they pretty much go balls to the wall the entire match. Hashi is a guy who throws rotten cantaloupe sounding headbutts as a regular spot, but man alive was there some nasty hollow echoes going on here from both guys. Finish was sick as they both place their hands behind their back and just smash their heads into each other over and over, with Hashi just streaming blood. Nohashi buckles and Hashi chokes him out. Really short, really fun.

Brahman Shu/Brahman Kei/Daisuke Ikeda v. Takeshi Ono/Manabu Suruga/White Moriyama

Hell of a main event. Here is the Daisuke Ikeda we know and love. Brahmans continue to grow on me as they were delivering an appropriate level of violence. There were really kicking the shit out of Moriyama in really unsafe places, back of the neck, the throat, the temple, and their water bottle spot looked less like a comedy spot and more like a waterboarding.I loved Surgura coming in and wasting everyone with lariats. Of course the highlight of this match was Ono v. Ikeda and it delivered what you wanted it to. Ono was unloading, multiple punch combinations, rights, lefts, bodyshots, leaving it all out there, and Ikeda does some very cool selling, and rolling with the punches and when he fires back he does it with impact. The finishing run with Moriyama v. Ikeda was awesome too, with Moriyama also throwing the kitchen sink at Ikeda desperately trying to slay the dragon, but he falls to that thudding right hand. Great match to end a great card. Futen is the best.

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ON GUARD I'LL LET YOU TRY MY FUTEN STYLE - Futen 7/25/10

You can pick this up from

damian1488@hotmail.com

This is the best overall of the three shows, even with missing Ikeda

Manabu Suruga vs Kazuki Okubo

Fun match with Okubo in his traditional role of fired up youngster. Suruga was great in the veteran role, he dominates early establishing his role, and when Okubo does get a run of offense, he sells his ass off and you really buy into the possibility of a big upset. The cross armbreaker he wins with really feels like a desperation hold, like Suruga thought to himself "fuck I am in real trouble I had better take this kid out."

Taro Nohashi vs Peace Man

Peace man is one of those weird Japanese comedy gimmicks which I am not culturally able to understand. Match itself had some nice moments, there is a baseline with Futen matches. The work is usually going to be stiff enough and make enough sense, that it won't fall below a certain point.

Koichiro Kimura vs Makoto Hashi

Another good Hashi match, as he seems to beat Kimura into giving a shit. Hashi plays underdog here as well as he played overdog in his Hiugaji match. Kimura is really violent here, laying in some vicious stomps in the corner and unleashing a zit poppingly tight neck crank. Short match but intense and fun.

Takahiro Oba/Brahman Shu/Brahman Kei vs Tamon Honda/Kengo Mashimo/Ryuichi Sekine

My favorite of the Brahman matches and they are starting to grow on me. It is pretty cool how Oba's shtick works just as well as dickish heel stuff as it works as babyface spots. He and Mashimo work a lot of the same spots they worked in their singles matches, with the face/heel switched and it still was good shit. Sekine takes the beating again and the heels are great at kicking his ass, and he gets his ass kicked. Honda is great when he is in, but isn't in enough, I did love the duel German suplexes with Mashimo. Fun finish run and this is a match I could see non-shoot fans digging a bunch too.

Takeshi Ono vs Mitsuya Nagai

Great singles match, and another amazing performance by Ono, who really cemented himself in my eyes as one of the best wrestlers in the world. Nagai is a flawed wrestler, but he is a great crowbar and he is brutal here, just beating the hell out of the smaller guy. Ono has brought a knife to a gunfight and just great taking a beating and selling absolute desperation. He starts out trying to go toe to toe with Nagai but gets overwhelmed, and by the end all he is left with is desperately diving for submissions, only to see Nagai shrug them off and lay in a bigger beating. Some of the elbows from the top Nagai was landing looked as violent as Wanderlei Silva elbows, nothing is pulled in Futen. Ono somehow grabbing the octopus felt like watching a real amazing sports comeback. I think this is a little behind the May tag, but is another killer Futen drop. Man someone has to get their back catalogue, I need to see ever match they have ever run.

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MAKE WAY FOR THE MERGE OF TRAFFIC, FUTEN COMING THROUGH WITH FULL METAL JACKET-Futen 6/27/10

You can pick this up from

damian1488@hotmail.com

Daisuke Ikeda vs Hajime Moriyama

This might be or only chance to see 2010 Futen Ikeda and he is who we thought he was. Ikeda comes in with a tightly wrapped forearm which Moriyama's saw as his one chance to get past the boss. Ikeda shows his dominance early by taking Moriyama to the mat and applying the single nastiest overhand wristlock I have ever seen. It looks early like a blowout until Moriyama starts whipping kicks to the arm. The match continues on that path, with Ikeda unloading with his stuff, while Moriyama kept working over his injury, which lead Ikeda to drop his hands and created other openings. It could have used a little more dramatic final act, but a fun match.

Koichiro Kimura vs Kazuki Okubo

This was structurally similar to the previous match, with Kimura in the role of the grizzled veteran. Okubo was aggressive and the match was stiff, but Kimura seemed not to give a fuck. Even when he was getting hit, he looked like he was about to check his watch. It kind of reminded of the dull Inoki v. random gajin matches I watched while picking stuff for the 80's NJ set. The couple of moments where Kimura actually sold and cared were pretty good, but those were few and far between.

Brahman Shu/Brahman Kei vs Takeshi Ono/Ryuichi Sekine

I enjoyed the Brahmans in this match a lot more then in the previous show (or really ever before.) They were playing the role of nasty veterans working over a rookie and they nastily worked over said rookie. The kicks and punches were flying and landing, and they bust up Sekine's mouth and spit on him while kicking his ass. We get pissed off Ono getting his revenge and he looks great doing it, there is still too much Takeshi on the apron for my tastes. Still the match had some nice drama and Sekine showed some grit, and I no longer dread the Brahman's dragging down a card.

Makoto Hashi vs Manabu Suruga

I enjoyed this although it was the least of three big singles matches on the show. They do some nice grappling early, but everything is pretty much a preface to the end run which has two minutes of both guys just smashing their heads into each other ram style. It is pretty nasty stuff with Hashi splitting himself open. The final KO headbutt felt like a KO headbutt, weird finish, violent, but not the kind of back and forth story some of the other matches told.

Kengo Mashimo vs Takahiro Oba

Really good singles match, Mashimo continues to impress me. He is really great as a violent bully, and while Oba does some goofy things he has great charisma and for some reason his goofy shit doesn't bother me the way Sawa's shtick does. We had some solid grappling early with Mashimo really wrenching in some holds. Oba then tries his running windmill punches, and I like how Mashimo just steps to the side and blasts him with kicks, knocks him down, and then does this great asshole stroll around the ring. They also nicely work around Oba's airplane spin, as it gets countered early and then when he hits it, there is an actual dramatic double KO near fall off an airplane spin of all things. Finish was great with both guys throwing bombs and Oba earning Mashimo's respect before getting caught and finished.

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FUTEN KILLER BEES, WE ON A SWARM - Futen 5/30/10

Max Lanicault got in 3 COUNT THEM 3 Futen shows and I got them all, bizarrely we only get one Ikeda match in the batch, but there is plenty other good looking stuff. Max is cheap so email him at

damian1488@hotmail.com

if you want it, and you want it.

Shoichi Uchida vs Kazuki Okubo

Pretty basic undercard singles match except with the stiffness dialed up to 11 Futen style. So slaps and kicks, with all the slaps and kicks landing with bad intentions. These shows are filmed in almost a Black Terry Jr. super close up handheld style which really accentuates the violence. Finish was really great with Uchida hitting almost an Oklahoma Stampede Northern Lights bomb, top rope dropkick to the next and then a crossface choke. Okubo fights to the ropes almost gets the break, before Uchida torques back on the neck for the tap. I really liked the way they teased a near fall, but ended up just ending the match.

Makoto Hashi vs. Rui Hiugaji

I have never seen Hiugaji before (and he doesn't show up again) but he is a guy who knows he is in Futen. Just a disgusting violent match, they have some breathtakingly stiff and fast exchanges in this match. At one point Hiugaji rears back and lands an overhand right full force into Hashi's throat, another time Hashi hits a spinning back fist to the back of Hiugaji's head. Hashi was doing a lot of countering and absorbing, as Hiugaji would go on these flurries and Hashi would kick back in the pocket, block, dodge and counter. It was a really great Fujiwaraish/Bernard Hopkinish performance by Hashi. Hiugaji is so aggressive he ends up punching himself out and Hashi ends up sinking in the choke. Great match

Brahman Shu/Brahman Kei vs. Tamon Honda/Hajime Moriyama

The Brahmans are ex-Toryuman and don't really feel like they belong in this fed, working a kind of generic juniors tag style. There was some nice scrambling between a Brahman and Moriyama early, but that was the only thing either Brahman did which impressed me. Honda is always great although there really wasn't enough of him. He works like kind of a monster as he dominates the action when we get to see him. The Brahman's win with a KO kick on Moriyama which was preposterously weak compared to most of the kicks in this fed. This is Futen son, if you are going to win with a kick, you had better win with a kick.

Mitsuya Nagai vs. Taro Nohashi

A squash with Nagai working as Big John Studd. Nohashi tries to bodyslam him and fails, ect. Nothing to see here.

Takahiro Oba/Takeshi Ono vs. Kengo Mashimo/Manabu Suruga

Tremendous match which may even be better then the great 2009 Futen tag. Right up there with PARK v. Mesias and the best IWRG matches from 2010. Mashimo and Surgura are bad asses in this laying in big time beatings on Oba and Ono who are both great at selling nasty shots, and are super charismatic fighting back. Ono is really well known for being a smirking douchebag, and it is shocking how great he is as a guy on an apron ralling his partner, or a guy taking a big beting. I really enjoyed Mashimo in this as he would exchange and then get sick of it, and just grab his opponent and hurl them to the side, he also laid in with some really thudding kicks. Some of the coolest selling of the year from Ono and Oba there are multiple moments of facial selling which I actually verbally marked out for. There is a great moment where Ono takes a German suplex into the turnbuckle and his eyes rolls up in his head and he slightly shakes, while trying to punch his legs to get feeling in them. Finish run is just Ono and Suruga in your traditional Ikeda v. Ishikawa role, where their partners clear out and they just go after each other, 15th round in Manila style. Ono lands some of the best uppercuts I have ever seen in wrestling, and the finish is a fucking finish.

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FUTEN- 4/9/09

PAS: MOTHERFUCKING FUTEN

TAKA Michinoku vs Shoichi Uchida

TKG: Hey it’s a TAKA match with no superkicks. This is our first taste of Futen. Stylisitically it is worked as a basic undercard indy juniors match with no rope running and a bit more matwork. While there was no rope running, there still was lots of running offense. I don’t think I’ve seen Uchida before, and TAKA does a yeoman’s job of selling for his power offense and lots of really loose crossfaces. I can’t imagine wanting to watch Uchida v a guy who can’t sell as well as TAKA.

PAS: Yeah I didn’t get much of a sense of Uchida, but he didn’t do a ton for me. Most of the match was worked around Uchida’s crossface and TAKA’s facelock. I guess you don’t need a really tight crossface to buy it as a finish in 2009, but it had the look of a Helmsely crossface.

Kengo Mashimo vs Shinjitsu Nohashi

TKG: I was kind of expecting more Mashimo stiffness. Surprisingly, Nohashi was the guy who brought more stiffness to the table for the body of the match. Nohashi had some nasty face stomps and running headbutts. Got the sense that these guys have a touring match worked out and instead of doing something different here, just tried to force it in.

PAS: You don’t expect the midget Shinzaki to be the guy laying it in, but his stomps were by far the highlight of the match. I do prefer these kind of modified Indy juniors matches to whatever Keita Yano is supposed to be doing in BattlArts undercards, but it isn’t anything special.

Mitsuya Nagai & White Moriyama vs Shu Sato & Kei Sato

TKG: Nagai hasn’t had a good match in ages and he looked like complete crap running in for his hot tag fired up offense. Thankfully he wasn’t in this match much. I kind of liked White Moriyama here as his offense was good looking and he was good at working the face in peril role. The Satos are odd in that their stuff can either look super super gentle or absolutely nasty with no middle ground.

PAS: Moriyama comes in with a bandage on his face, and by the first couple of minutes it gets kicked off, and you see a nasty gash on his cheek. It nicely adds to the violence of the Sato’s kicks. I really liked the early Moriyama mat work, he had really fast amateur rides. The Sato’s were pretty good at bringing their indy shtick and working it in this environment, they landed a really stiff top rope dropkick for example.


Koichiro Kimura vs Hayato Jr Fujita

TKG: This was mostly Fujita bringing it to Kimura with Kimura occasionally catching and twisting the fuck out of Fujita. I don’t remember Kimura working like this before. He sold Fujita’s stuff well and when he put him in a sub they were some of the most twisting dislocating subs you’ll see in pro wrestling. I especially liked the half crab he put n for a near fall in the middle of match.

PAS: Fujita is a guy who I have really enjoyed in the past, but he seemed to be pulling his kicks a bit. Kind of weird thing to be doing in Futen of all places. The violence of Kimura’s submission made up for the lack of violence in the strikes though.


Daisuke Ikeda & Takeshi Ono vs Manabu Suruga & Takahiro Oba

TKG: So the thing with Hara is he’s always been a guy who doesn’t sell on the level of the top level BattlArts guys. But here he is really spectacular in role of underdog babyface. I mean this is the best I can ever remember Hara looking. I don’t know what really to make of Oba. He’s really charismatic and has lots of awkward ogreish offense. Not sure if he’s over in a legit Rufus R Jones way or in a more ironic Hack Myers way. But his stuff amused me. But for lots of this it didn’t feel like it mattered who the faces were. As this was just a spectacular Ikeda/Ono as MX performance where they whipped out all their shit allowing both faces to work long in peril section. Ono for a guy who I haven’t seen in forever was as nasty and disdainful as I remember him.

PAS: Just a totally spectacular match. Ono and Ikeda are an amazing heel tag team, like a super violent Anderson brothers as they spend much of the match isolating each guy and murdering them. Ikeda is so great at stopping people from making saves, when Ono is torturing Oba, Ikeda and Suruga(Hara) have this mini Greco pummeling brawl while Hara tries desperately for a save. The finish run with Ikeda and Suruga is as great as any Ikeda v. Ishikawa struggle. They have this spectacular finishing punch section, which combines a violent BattlArts punch exchange with a almost Lawler v. Mantel fatigue war. I don’t remember seeing Oba before, and he had some super goofy shit, but in some way it worked well. He kind of kept throwing himself at the heels in weird way, including smashing Ikeda in the face with his taint. And don’t forget about fuckin Ono who was as huge a cunt as he was ten years ago. He may have been the best guy in the match, stomping, kicking and twisting guys in pretzels. I am going to want to watch it again, but it feels on first watch like the 2009 MOTY.

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